A wave of cold weather hit large parts of Europe, causing the death of numerous people across the continent, while alcohol was blamed in Ukraine cold deaths, Emergency Situations Minister Viktor Baloga told journalists. Reportedly, some 130 people have died due to the bad weather in Ukraine in the past couple of weeks, while 3,000 Ukrainians have been hospitalized during the same period.

Some 14,000 homeless people are roaming along the streets of the Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev, and it is not quite a news story that alcohol is blamed in Ukraine cold deaths, since the alcohol is an obvious solution for homeless people to warm themselves in below-freezing conditions. The authorities have distributed some 3,000 emergency relief tents all over the country, trying to reduce the number of cold-related deaths to a minimum.

The alcohol gives an imaginary feeling of security, while not helping the body to get warmer, thus causing numerous deaths among homeless and low-income people who have no other means to protect themselves against freezing.

The temperatures in Kiev have been below zero degrees Celsius for 25 days in a row and, alcohol blamed in Ukraine cold deaths aside, many people who are working outside also suffer from the somewhat unusual weather conditions.

A new swine flu strain has been discovered in the United States and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are working on a new vaccine against the strain, named A(H3Ns)v. It is a variant of the A(H3N2) virus, which is known for its ability to sicken people and 12 Americans suffered from the swine influenza in the U.S. since July 2011, the agency said in a press release.

The new swine flu strain have sickened people in Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, while all patients infected with the virus variation have recovered successfully. Nevertheless, drug manufacturers are expected to start developing a vaccine against the A(H3Ns)v after the CDC has prepared a “seed virus”, CDC spokesman Thomas Skinner said. According the various reports, the seasonal influenza vaccine for 2011-2012 is not able to provide high enough level of protection against the new virus variant.

The A(H3N2)v strain is not spreading freely from human to human, experts said, adding that human-to-human is not characteristic for some variations of the swine flu virus. People should be aware that the trivalent seasonal vaccine protects only against the 2009 pandemic virus, the regular A(H3N2) virus, and an influenza B strain, while protection against the new swine flu strain is still in its earliest stage of development.

Springvalley Middle School at Kelowna, B.C. imposed a ban on students to wear breast-cancer bracelets at school, saying the bracelets are offensive. The school authorities told students not to wear the breast cancer awareness wristbands that feature the slogan “I (love) boobies!” printed on them. The bracelets are distributed among young people by Keep A Breast Canada in the framework of a youth-oriented breast cancer awareness campaign.

School District 23 superintendent Hugh Gloster told journalists the bracelets were banned because of the language that is not suitable for teenagers with a number of parents complaining about the language used on the wristbands. According to the school regulations, people have to cover or remove items containing offensive language. The ban on the “edgy” bracelets came into force after numerous people find the Keep A Breast campaign overwhelmingly offensive and its slogans caused distraction among others.

Michelle Murray, Keep A Breast executive director, went on to say that the wristbands are designed to be worn by younger people and heighten awareness about breast cancer, thus they were made to keep in line with the language of young people.

Rep. Michele Bachmann took a firm stance against vaccination, insisting vaccines are able to cause autism, multiple sclerosis and juvenile diabetes, and attacked the HPV vaccine that protects against human papillomavirus. The virus is the main cause for the majority of cases of cervical cancer and other types of cancer like cancers of the mouth and throat, the anus, and penis.

According to medical experts, however, Bachmann publicizes myths about the side effects of vaccines with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention denying any side effects are caused by vaccines at all. Popular false beliefs include myths that measles vaccines cause autism, while whooping-cough vaccines cause brain damage. However, no one have developed brain damage after taking the vaccine nor autism is spread amongst people who have been vaccinated with meaasles vaccines, doctors warned.

Vaccines are safe the Institute of Medicine, an independent body that studies big health questions, said after 15 years of research on vaccines and can cause health and medical problems rarely. Nevertheless, nearly a third of American teenagers have not got HPV vaccine due to their parents fear side effects might occur.

Have you ever went out into the sun slathered with sunscreen and still come in burned? There are literally thousands of people that wear the highest strength sunscreen possible and still come in feeling and looking like they have been in the oven. Why? What is the problem?

Recent studies show that even people who wear sunscreen can be severe burns if they have taken in certain prescription medications. If you take prescription medications for mental problems, diuretic medicines and even birth control you may be more susceptible to getting burnt by the sun.

Even more strange to some people is the fact that if you handle certain foods even days later you may be able to get horrible blisters in the spots that you handled those foods. One of these is limes. The skin of the lime and the juice on your skin mixed with the sun equals a potentially painful burn.

It is recommend that you do wear sunscreen but that you wear a hat, stay in the shade and limit the amount of sun that you do get if you keep experiencing burns from the sun.

One of the biggest diet crazes that has been going around is the HCG diet. Many people have had success with these injections but the long term side effects are not yet known.

Most of the time people that use the HCG diet are those that have a large amount of weight to lose and have exhausted other methods of weight loss.

HCG also known as Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is a natural hormone that is produced during pregnancy and it is believed to trigger burning of abnormal fat stores. Just because this is a hormone that occurs naturally during pregnancy does not mean that it only works for women. These injections also work for men as well.

On the HCG diet you are going to have to reduce your calorie intake to a mere 500 calories. There is a special diet that you have to go on to make this work however. If you reduce your calories to 500 without HCG your body is going to use your muscles are fuel instead of your abnormal fat.

Meghan McCain along with several other famous young ladies have decided to make a stand against skin cancer. They stripped of their clothing and went atop a roof. In December Meghan McCain tweeted: “Well, I’ve never been half naked on the roof of a building in front of a group of strangers b4, give it up to the girls who took it all off.” No doubt that this was pretty confusing to quite a few people but now we know what is going on.

The message from Meghan McCain and the other girls was simply that you should not go outside without sunscreen. Each girl told a story of something that they did naked. Things like going on a date, walking their dog etc. The whole thing came down to if you go outside without sunscreen you may as well be naked.

The video was wholesome enough I suppose but it did get more than a few glances from people that were interested in seeing the Mr McCain’s daughter in the buff. Were you one of the people that got drawn in by the “naked” title? If you want to see the video you can watch it below.

Thousands of people are interested in weight loss. It seems there is always a new diet that is coming along. There is the Dukan diet and some people go with HCG. Is there really anything that is a solid fact when it comes to this issue?

There was a study done recently about people who are night owls and eat late. The people that stayed up late got less sleep than the normal sleepers. They also had a much less healthful diet. One of the big things that went against their weight loss was that they ate more fast food.

The conclusion that was came to in this study was pretty much that you should regulate when you sleep and eat. I could have pretty much told you that much. I wonder who got to pay for all of the research for this “weight loss” study. Hopefully it was not taxpayer dollars.

Hard boiled eggs are a big topic this Saturday. Tomorrow is Easter and plenty of people are getting ready to make Easter eggs for those baskets. Almost everyone knows that you simply can not put an uncooked egg in one of these baskets. This is why everyone is asking about how to hard boil eggs.

Hard boiled eggs are not that difficult to make but many times people overcook them. An overcooked hard boiled egg can be pretty disgusting. You need to make sure that you have the right equipment but you also need to make sure that you are paying attention when you are cooking your eggs. Let’s look at how to hard boil eggs now.

Simply place the eggs that you want to make hard boiled eggs into a pan that is just big enough to hold them in a single layer. You will then pour cold water over them until they are covered and then you bring the water to a rolling boil. Cook them for about one minute and then remove them from the heat. In about 20 minutes you will have eggs that are perfectly cooked.

There is a new diet hitting America. Dr Dukan is a very quiet and humble man that stumbled across this quick way to lose weight. Despite the fact that you can loose weight quickly that does not mean that this is a fad diet. The Dukan diet is serious and is meant for long term weight loss.

One of the main things that you will see about the Dukan diet is the use of bran. This is a little more difficult to find in the US than it is in France but hopefully this will change soon. Of course America has plenty of oatmeal but this is something different. The Dukan diet boasting “Over 5 million French people can’t be wrong.”

This diet is high protein and low fat. There are four faces that the dieter must follow. Below is what diet information as found in the NY Times.

The first phase encourages dieters to eat as much as they want of non-fatty, protein-rich foods, including oat bran — a key component — washed down with oceans of water. The second stage introduces vegetables, but no fruit; the third brings with it two slices of bread, a serving of cheese and fruit and two servings of carbohydrates a day, with two weekly “celebration” meals with wine and dessert (the diet is French, after all); and the final stage — six days a week of “anything goes” and one day of reversion to strict stage one.